


Tell Me We'll Never Get Used to It

by wanttobeatree



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John, readjusting to life together after Sherlock's return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me We'll Never Get Used to It

**Author's Note:**

> A slice of ridiculous fluff written for [this photoset](http://frightfullytreeish.tumblr.com/post/19118947058/221believer-sunshinetinauk-reichenfeels) on tumblr. Title from Richard Siken's _Scheherazade_.

All the way back from the literally and figuratively explosive arson case – both of them now sooty and slightly singed – Sherlock is quiet. John can’t call it quieter than normal, because that would imply there was any normalcy to begin with, and with this new Sherlock there’s a whole new set of abnormalities to learn. He came back quieter, more prone to these thoughtful lapses, more prone to considering his words before he opens his mouth. 

Eighteen months with your mouth shut will do that to you, John supposes.

Sherlock is staring – out the taxi window, yes, of course, but also at John, and at the cabbie, and at the taxi’s grubby interior – lightly burnt beggars cannot be choosers – and then back to John again.

“Alright?” John asks, after ten silent minutes of this cycle.

Sherlock’s gaze swings back to him. Those wide, opalescent eyes in the dark.

“Fine. Superficial burns,” he says.

“I’ll take a look at them when we get home.”

“Unimportant. My scarf, however...” Sherlock trails off, motioning down at its blackened remnants.

John laughs. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

Sherlock’s lips twist up sharply at one corner, the truest and briefest of his smiles. There’s a long streak of soot down the side of his nose.

“Of course,” he murmurs, then drifts back into silence again.

The sound of his voice is still, in some ways, a shock to John, after eighteen months of its absence. They’re both different now, he supposes. He had been so angry when Sherlock returned from the dead, he’d _had_ to forgive him. Anything that could make him so strongly feel something other than quiet, unending loneliness was a thing worth keeping, despite it all.

There were few things more worthy of keeping.

 

The one time they had come even slightly close to talking about it together – a week after Sherlock’s return, once it had all simmered down, the reunions and high emotions and the case with Moriarty’s final surviving henchman that had brought Sherlock out of hiding – John had asked Sherlock only one question. The most obvious one: tell me what you did whilst you were gone.

“No,” Sherlock had said. “Boring. _It_ was boring.”

“You faked your death to spend a year and a half hunting down an international crime-ring and all you have to say is _it was boring?_ ”

Sherlock had shrugged, had turned away to fuss around with refilling the kettle and turning it on with his back to John. It was an hour later, once he had forgotten all about the cooling water and John had had to make the tea himself, that Sherlock said, “It _was_ boring, John. There was nobody to talk to.”

 

Back at their flat now, Sherlock yanks off his coat and what was his scarf and dumps them half on the kitchen table. After the quiet peace of the cab ride, it seems as if a shoe has dropped, and as John watches Sherlock paces through into the living room, and then at the sight of John swings right back around and goes to turn the kettle on. 

John follows, tugging off his own smoky jacket. The kettle is empty, so John turns it off. The coat and scarf are sliding down onto the floor, so John catches them, folds the bundle up with his jacket and drops it onto a chair. Sherlock paces back out into the living room.

“I hate arson,” he calls. “It’s dull, John. Unimaginative. There’s rarely any finesse involved, only mess and destruction.”

“I promised I’d get you a new scarf, didn’t I?”

“Forget the scarf.”

“You say that now, Sherlock, but if I _don’t_ get you a new one, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I’m not talking about the scarf!”

John snorts. He refills the kettle and whilst it’s boiling gets out the first aid kit. “Come here, would you? Sit down. I’m not shouting after you while you wander around.”

Sherlock sits on the chair closest to the door, shoving their clothes onto the floor. Now he’s sitting still and in the light, John can see that Sherlock’s nose is red beneath the soot. The kettle boils, but he ignores it.

“Burns first,” he says, at Sherlock’s questioning glance. “Tea later. Let me see your hands.”

Sherlock holds them out with a sigh. His knees are jiggling arrhythmically, feet tapping on the ground, but John ignores that too, taking Sherlock’s hands and turning them over.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “They’re fine-”

“I _told_ you-”

“They’re fine,” John continues, louder. “Few days and some burn cream should do it. For god’s sake, no experiments with caustic chemicals until Thursday, at _least_ Thursday. You’re bloody lucky you didn’t get worse, charging into a burning building like that.”

“You followed me.”

John glances up at Sherlock, then back down at his red hands. “Well, I’m bloody lucky too, aren’t I?”

Sherlock pulls his hands away sharply, hissing as it aggravates his burns. When John looks up in surprise, Sherlock is staring at him.

“What?”

He shakes his head. John pauses, waiting. 

“Wash your nose,” he says, eventually, as nothing more comes. He stands and turns to grab a couple of mugs.

There’s an explosion of movement and sound from behind him. That’s the other shoe dropped, then. John spins around to find Sherlock on his feet and his chair tipped over on the floor and, 

“You followed me!” Sherlock exclaims.

John carefully puts the mugs back down. “Do you... not want me to?”

“Yes! No!” Sherlock snarls and stalks out into the living room, walking around it in one quick circuit before he bursts back in. “I’m trying to – You follow me. Ceaselessly, John. Even when I left, you – and then you look after my scarf and – and my _hands_ , do you see?”

“Not as such, no,” John says.

Sherlock groans, rights his chair and sits back down. He presses his fingers to his lips. 

“I need to _think_.”

“D’you – need to be alone?”

“No,” Sherlock murmurs, closing his eyes. “Never.”

“Okay.”

John stands and stares at him for a moment, at the soot still on his nose. No, he thinks, no, this is the other shoe dropping. Then he reboils the water and makes the tea. He takes his time with it, letting it brew properly, taking extra care with the milk, and once he sits down and pushes a mug across the table, Sherlock has become like a statue again, perfectly calm. His eyes are open.

“John,” he says.

“Present.”

“John, I’ve always considered myself married to my work.”

“Yes.” John smiles, sips his tea. “I’ve been informed.”

“And now,” Sherlock says, “you are a part of my work. And life is intolerably boring without you.”

For once, he isn’t looking at John, his eyes flickering over everything in the kitchen that _isn’t_ John, but John is looking at him. The soot on his nose, and another streak on his neck, and the burns on those fingers, still pressed against that mouth. 

Those eyes, flickering up to meet John’s at last.

“Life is,” Sherlock says, “intolerable without you.”

“Okay,” John says. “Yes, okay. I will – I do – whichever. Yes. Wash your nose first.”

Sherlock closes his eyes. Lips curled up, brief and true, he smiles.


End file.
